


The Stars Don't Look Bigger

by Krasimer



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Aliens, BAMF Gaz (Invader Zim), Dib Has Issues (Invader Zim), Eventual Relationships, Experimental Style, Frenemies Dib & Zim (Invader Zim), Future Fic, Gaz Being Gaz (Invader Zim), M/M, Older Dib (Invader Zim), POV Dib (Invader Zim), Slow To Update, Tall Zim (Invader Zim), The Almighty Tallest Being Assholes (Invader Zim), The Tallest were killed, They'll be in flashbacks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2020-11-07 18:37:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20821958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: It was just gone.No explanations, no epic final battle, no confrontations – Zim’s base was just gone.Dib stood at the edge of the crater, trying to piece it together in his head. They’d had a few fights in the last week, the same stuff as always. Zim threatens to invade the Earth, Dib swears to protect and avenge it, yadda yadda, same shit as usual, nothing ever changes. The fact that the alien’s base was now missing was…Concerning. Had Dib pushed too far?Had Zim given up?No.No way.





	1. Crash Landing

It was just gone.

No explanations, no epic final battle, no confrontations – Zim’s base was just _gone._

Dib stood at the edge of the crater, trying to piece it together in his head. They’d had a few fights in the last week, the same stuff as always. Zim threatens to invade the Earth, Dib swears to protect and avenge it, yadda yadda, same shit as usual, nothing ever changes. The fact that the alien’s base was now missing was…Concerning. Had Dib pushed too far?

Had Zim given up?

No.

No way.

Dib might have pushed too far, but Zim would never give up on something like that. It wasn’t in him to give up on his mission, on his threats to take over the world and subjugate its people. No matter how irritated he might have gotten, he would never give up on that.

He’d been chasing it for years now, almost a decade.

Enough time for Dib to head off to college, having grown up and gotten past the worst parts of schooling. He’d been away for a few weeks, coming home every weekend, and he’d still managed to find time to get into it with Zim in the way they always had. Fight, argue, declare temporary victory while one or both limped home to lick their wounds and recover from their toil.

Dib had chosen to take a poetry class, it had turned out to not be the worst thing ever but he had started talking with a more intense vocabulary.

He closed his eyes as he stepped closer to the edge of the crater, trying to remember what the alien had been shouting the last time they’d met. Something out of the ordinary? It had all sounded normal, nothing so much as a blip on the ‘this is different’ radar. Zim hadn’t so much as changed his tune, still screeching about things that had happened when they’d first met and how he was planning on taking over the world for the Irken race.

Nothing had been different.

Zim hadn’t said anything about leaving, hadn’t voiced so much as ‘I might be gone soon’. He’d been there one minute and gone the next.

And a part of Dib felt guilty for wanting him to be back, to be where he was supposed to be. Zim had been an active threat to the world for about a decade. Dib had been fighting back the entire time, a war that no one else except for Gaz was aware of. No one had ever thanked him, but he’d kept fighting anyway – Humanity didn’t deserve to go extinct under the rule of an alien race.

But somewhere along the way, it had become less of a fight and more of a measure of their abilities.

Would Dib be able to stop this plot, would Zim be able to plan around this, would everything work out if one-third of their components were missing…

In a way, Dib would almost have called them friendly.

Competitive and potentially dangerous, sure, but almost-friendly.

This, however, this was new.

Dib crouched down at the edge of the crater, running his fingers along one blackened edge. Something had happened that took a lot of energy, burning the ground like that. He had never known how Zim had set up his base, he hadn’t been able to figure it out, but he didn’t think that removing it would have left burn marks like that behind.

There were just too many things out of place for him to think the alien had pulled up his roots and left.

The burn marks were the biggest thing, certainly, but there were other things. The lawn gnomes and other creatures had been destroyed, pieces of them still littering the grass. There were dents in the lawn from something setting down, a chunk of wood and metal that Dib recognized as the men’s room sign from the front door. What little he could tell from the pieces wasn’t comforting. Something had happened, something probably bad, and _it should have been a relief for Zim to be gone._

Instead, all he got was a feeling of empty loss and a vacant lot.

Dib stood back up and pulled his phone out of his pocket. Dialing, he winced as he thought about the reaction he’d get from the person on the other end of the line. Surprisingly, it picked up after two rings, faster than he’d ever known Gaz to answer her phone. “_What?_”

“Zim’s gone,” he told her, trying to keep his voice even.

“_And you’re bothering me with this…Why? You’ve wanted him gone for years._”

“No I haven’t,” Dib frowned, pressing the palm of his hand to his face. “Yes, I have. I don’t know! But he’s gone and there are signs of it going wrong, whatever happened. Pieces of his house on the ground, indents on the grass, whatever happened here happened in a big way.”

“…_What do you want me to do about it?”_

“I don’t know,” Dib sighed, shaking his head. “Make sure the door is unlocked? I’m going to swing by the house and pick up a few things from my room, check on some stuff.”

“_Are you going to contact the Swollen Eye?”_

Dib paused.

He’d contacted them so often they’d blocked his number several times, he’d been foiled time and again, he’d pissed them off in a major way – No. “I’m not going to. I…” he groaned, tugging at his hair. “I can’t. Something is happening here and I need to make sure of what it is before I drag anyone else into it.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Don’t tell dad, either.”

“_Got it._” He could hear the surprise in Gaz’s voice. Dib understood why it was there, too. Before this, he’d spent _years_ trying to get their father to believe him, to get someone to believe him, someone besides Gaz.

For him to be asking her not to tell anyone, that was something bigger than anything.

“I’ll be there in just a bit,” he told her. “Just make sure the front door is unlocked.” He waited until he heard her _‘mmhm’ _and then ended the call.

The house was quiet when he arrived.

Dib found Gaz sitting in the living room, her thumbs flying over the controls of her game. “So what exactly is happening?” she asked, no preamble or any greeting. It was the most social he’d ever seen her be, talking the moment someone approached her. “You sounded actually upset on the phone, not just paranoid and crazy like usual.”

“Zim’s entire base is gone,” he dropped to sit on the floor next to the couch. “And something about it doesn’t feel right. There’s damage to the surrounding ground and there’s debris scattered across the grass.”

For a moment, Gaz went very still.

She took a deep breath, nodded, then tapped a button that made her game’s music come to a sudden stop. “Dib,” she sighed, then nodded again. “You’re a paranoid idiot but you’re actually pretty smart sometimes. I want you to know that my next question is because of that, and I want you to remember how little patience I have for your conspiracies.” She met his eyes, her forehead drawn down in worry. “What do you think happened?”

What _did_ he think had happened?

“Well,” Dib sat up a little straighter, closing his eyes for a second and picturing the lot as he’d seen it. “There were pieces of the lawn decorations and the front door on the grass. The house was gone, with only that weird white patch of grass left behind where it had been. On top of that,” he paused, licked his lips, then opened his eyes. “The grass had been burnt. There were indents and burns, like something had landed there. I know enough about Zim’s ship to know that it wouldn’t have left those markings – his engine doesn’t burn like that.” He paused again, his next words feeling like ten-ton weights on his tongue. “I think something took him.”

“Okay.” Gaz actually _closed her game_ and nodded one more time. “Okay. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to grab some of my equipment and take it back to where his base was.” Dib met her eyes. “And I’m going to get scans of the area and see what might have happened. If I recognize the signature trail of whatever landed, if there is even anything I can find.”

“Good,” Gaz stood up and pushed at his shoulder to make him move out of her way. “I’m going with you.” She rolled her eyes when he went to say something, shaking her head. “Dib, you do realize how the last decade of your life has played out, right?”

“What do you mean?”

Looking thoroughly unimpressed, Gaz raised both eyebrows. “Let me put it this way, Dib. A new kid came to our school, acting different and looking out of place. You _immediately_ honed in on him and started talking about him constantly. You obsessed and followed him around and every other word out of your mouth was either his _name_ or something about how he wasn’t going to win against you.” She put her hands on her hips, tapping one foot on the floor. “And then there was parent-teacher night. You told _dad_ of all people, ‘there’s someone I want you to meet’, which is standard for introducing your romantic partners to your parents.”

Dib reared back, felt his eyes going wide behind his glasses. “But – No, but, Zim’s an alien! I just wanted him to know which kid I was talking about!”

“Dad already knew that, _genius,_” Gaz made a face, then shook her head. “It was obvious which person you were talking about. You’d pointed him out so many times and talked about him so much that before I even met him, I knew it was him. So did dad. I heard him talking, the other day, about how much of a pity it was that you and the ‘green-boy’ weren’t coming out and telling him that you were dating.”

Face flushing a bright pink, Dib swallowed hard against the sudden lump in his throat. “What?”

“He approves of him, you _absolute nerd!”_ Gaz threw her hands into the air. “And now the guy you’ve been in love with for the past six years is missing.”

“…Six years?”

“I’m shaving time off to account for you getting over your repressed-nerd-sexuality phase.” Gaz went around him and grabbed the sleeve of his jacket, dragging him towards his room. “Nine years ago, you met him. You were thirteen.”

“I was twelve, actually.”

“Oh, _whatever_,” Glaring at him, she continued to tug him down the hall. “My point is, Dib, you’ve been obsessed with him for almost a decade and in love with him for the past six years, no matter how you look at it. So I am going to help you figure out where he went.”

She pushed open the door to his room and shoved him in. “Find the equipment you need, pack your stuff up, we’re going to go find the nerd-alien who has been just as obsessed with you as you are with him.”

Standing alone, in the middle of his room, Dib felt his entire face go hot.

Without another word, he packed his gear up, listening to Gaz’s footsteps retreat down the hall to her own room.

Even with company, the vacant lot where Zim’s base used to be seemed too empty and dead.

“This is…Horrible.” Gaz looked around, peering out from under the umbrella she’d been smart enough to grab on their way out the door. On the walk over, it had started pouring down rain and she hadn’t once offered to share her cover with Dib.

“I know,” Dib crouched down to one of the indents on the grass, taking a couple of photos of it with his foot next to it for scale. “I should want this to have happened,” he muttered. “For the biggest threat to our world to be gone – I should have wanted Zim to leave, ages ago.” He paused in documenting everything before the rain washed it away. “Gaz, what’s wrong with me?”

“Everything, you dork,” Gaz glared at him, narrowing her eyes. “There is nothing that is not wrong about you. But, newsflash, idiot,” she stretched out her leg and gently kicked his thigh. “That’s what being in love is like, especially when your dumb brain decided to fall in love with an alien bent on conquering our world.”

Dib winced, his shoulders rising up to try and shield himself. “That was not something I meant to do – And I’m not even sure I’m in love with him!”

Gaz rolled her eyes at him again.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dib saw something move. It was hard to see in the rain, but the flash of pink had been unmistakable. He couldn’t smell anything with the scent of water hitting the grass, petrichor in the air, but he could almost see small wisps of smoke being drowned. “Zim?” he called out, frowning. There was no reply, but there was something shuffling around in what looked to be a cardboard box.

He looked at Gaz, who looked back at him and nodded.

Together, they moved closer to the box and stood a few feet away from it. The construct of corrugated cardboard hadn’t been on the lot when he’d been there earlier, Dib was sure of it. Gaz shoved him closer, jerking her head towards it.

Slowly, Dib reached out and pulled up the flap that covered the entire open end of the box.

In the years since Zim had come to Earth, he’d undergone changes. Some of them were almost boring – different clothes, different shoes, changing out the wig in his disguise. Some of them had been interesting and Zim had actually explained one of them to Dib, once.

The gravity on Earth was different than the gravity on the planet Zim came from.

Their leaders were apparently just…Taller. Than the rest of their species. That was why they were leaders. Any Irken who could overcome the gravitational pull of their planet and become taller than the rest was immediately given a position of leadership. It was seen as a power beyond power, defiance against the forces at work.

But on Earth, Zim had gotten taller.

He was about Dib’s height, thin limbs and a lanky body, and he’d been extremely pleased with that fact. Zim was taller than the Tallests, he’d explained, which meant that when he went home he’d be their leader.

When Dib saw Zim cowering in the back of the box, however, he didn’t look tall and imposing anymore. He looked scared and small, terrified in a way that Dib had never seen him be. His disguise was missing, his pink eyes wide in fear. When he saw Dib, they narrowed and Zim hissed, curling even further into the back.

His gloves were missing, his fingers bare and the skin on them burned from contact with the rain.

Each of his four fingers had a claw at the end, the tips of them ragged and broken, and Dib felt the bottom of his stomach drop out. “Zim, what happened to you?” he studied the alien, feeling horror well up inside of him. He turned back to his sister. “Gaz, could you bring your umbrella closer?”

For once, she did as he asked without complaint, bringing her hood up and holding the umbrella out over him and the box.

Dib turned back to Zim, his heart pounding in his chest, and nodded. “Okay, Zim, we’ve got an umbrella and there’s no one else home right now. Our house is empty. It’s not too far away.” He reached out his hand, offering it palm-up to Zim. “Come with us.”

Instead of speech, Zim just hissed at him again, his blunted teeth showing when his upper lip curled. There were sounds in the hiss, almost like a type of speech that Dib recognized, and he noticed a thick scar running down Zim’s neck. It disappeared under the collar of his shirt, but it was obvious that it continued down and over his throat. “Did you have a translator before?” Dib put a hand to his own throat, where the scar was. “Can you understand me right now?”

Zim continued to glare and hiss at him.

Sighing, Dib cast around for something, then pulled his jacket off, offering it to Zim. “Put it on,” he told him, motioning what to do at the same time. He frowned when Zim did so with what looked to be a handicap – like something was wrong with one of his arms. He was holding it to his chest as if it were injured, but he switched hands after he’d gotten one sleeve on.

Dib saw another flash of pink, between green fingers, and he decided to file it away for later. “C’mon,” he gestured for Zim to follow him, moving back so that the alien could get out of the box and under the umbrella. “We’re going to our house,” he watched as Zim clambered out and stood up slowly, off-balance for a second. Thankfully, there were still boots on his feet and he wasn’t going to be walking through water without that amount of protection.

Gaz stayed silent, only offering the umbrella to Dib and pulling her hood tighter around her face.

The walk back to the house was quiet, awkward and almost uncomfortable except for the fact that Zim kept pressing closer to Dib like he actually trusted him.

His sister had been right, Dib decided. He’d actually managed to fall in love with an alien.

Their father still wasn’t home when they got back.

It gave Dib time to get Zim to his room, settling the alien on his bed. Zim was still curled up in Dib’s jacket, his knees pulled to his chest and his entire body hunched like he expected to be attacked at any moment. “Are you…” Dib crouched at the side of his bed, trying to figure out what to say to a seemingly traumatized alien. “Can you understand me?”

Zim’s eyes narrowed again, his hands still clutched to his chest. After a second, he nodded slowly. When he opened his mouth, that same hissing noise came out again.

“Is that your language?” Dib settled down onto his knees, trying to keep from being seen as a threat. Zim wasn’t the smartest being in the universe, wasn’t great at taking over the world, but he was still a threat if he got angry. The claws on his hands seemed dangerous, even when damaged, and Dib knew from experience that Zim had a temper. Whatever weapons were in his pak-thingy on his back were probably enough to _really_ do some damage if he decided that he didn’t like what Dib was doing.

Zim nodded again.

“But you can’t speak our language without whatever was in your neck,” Dib ventured. “Irken Armada, you’ve talked about that before. You’re a soldier. Equipped with whatever you would need to infiltrate and take over.” He blinked a couple of times. “That means a translator. You could speak our language because you assimilated it, right?”

Pink eyes narrowed even further and Zim’s head inclined a fraction.

“Right, stupid questions.” Dib sighed. “Okay. So. I’ve got Zim in my bedroom and he can’t tell me what happened. His translator is gone or damaged or something. How do I—”

“You’ve got that stupid ship in the garage,” Gaz’s voice called from behind him. She was standing at the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest. “The one you stole from Tak. You’ve been bugging us about it for years, haven’t you gotten anywhere with the language from it?”

“Oh, right.”

Zim hissed again, turning his head to look at Gaz. On the back of his head, Dib could see a smear of green fluid, something that might have been blood. With a snort-like sound, he stood up and pushed past Dib, still clutching whatever he was holding to his chest. With a noise that he would forever deny was a squeak, Dib rushed to follow him. He was standing in the middle of the living room, looking around with what seemed to be confusion on his face.

“The garage is this way,” Dib offered after a few seconds of watching him.

Something about Zim seemed off.

Maybe it was the fact that he couldn’t speak English anymore, his translator gone and a scar left behind. Maybe it was that he was holding himself differently, protective of the thing in his hands. It might even have been the fact that he had willingly accepted Dib’s help – that had never happened before. Dib was stubborn, just like his father, but Zim verged on idiotic pigheadedness. He refused any help offered to him unless he was desperate.

But the blood (maybe?) on the back of his head and Dib’s coat still around his thin frame made something about him seem too small. Zim had always been a large presence, loud and incapable of being ignored.

Whatever had happened to him, it had made him accept any help given to him.

He followed closely behind Dib as they walked into the garage. “The ship isn’t currently capable of flight,” Dib told Zim. “I’m trying to go through the systems one-by-one and figure them out.” He patted the console. “But it should work for you to try telling me what happened.”

Zim nodded and cautiously reached one hand out to type something into the ship.

Dib had been right, earlier – his claws were damaged. More of the green fluid had built up and seemed to be drying in and around the beds of his nails. Feeling a wave of horrified disgust in his stomach, Dib forced himself to look at the screen.

It took a second for him to translate it, but he nearly fell over when he did.

‘_My Tallest are gone. I saw them get destroyed.’_


	2. Riding All The Way Down

There had been an intruder alert.

He’d barely been paying attention, had been working on another scheme and trying to pull something together. GIR had been running around, shrieking like he usually did, and Zim had barely had the patience to deal with his usual antics, let alone someone new. The robo-parents had been dispatched and that should have been the end of it.

It hadn’t been.

He’d been on Earth long enough, should have known to anticipate something worse coming to find him – he’d made many enemies, in his lifetime. Whether it was going to be the human government or an Irken enemy, he hadn’t been sure but he should have realized that something was going to come find him. Nearly ten years on the stink-planet should have prepared him. His mission, one of the longest that he’d ever known of in the history of the Armada, had been going so well. Of course there had been setbacks, all long-term missions had those, but it had been coming along nicely.

Zim had almost forgotten that there were threats to his existence.

He’d been forced to go to school with the human children for so long that he’d actually almost grown fond of them. Dib and he had become, dare he say it, friendly.

But there had been an intruder alert and GIR had been frustrating and Zim—

Zim had forgotten anything beyond his work at the moment, until someone came into his lab and grabbed him. He’d been shoved into a cage of some kind and hauled away. By the calendar of the Earth, he’d only been gone about four days. The time he’d spent in another place, on another world, had been much longer than that.

As it was with Foodcourtia, there were some temporal oddities in the universe. By the calendar of the world he’d been taken to, it had been almost thirty years.

His Pak was reporting some damages and GIR was still missing when he managed to get back to where his base had once stood. The outer building was gone, ripped apart when he’d been taken, but his base was still in the ground. His neck sore from where his captors had pulled out his translator, Zim had hurried to grab some healing spray before hauling a box to the surface and collapsing the nanites that made up his labs.

When the rain had started, he’d moved to the back of the box and clutched the tube of nanites that had formed his home to his chest. If he could just make it out of that location, he could find somewhere else and set it all up again, rebuild his base and try to figure out what had happened. There had been mentions of Irken hatred, nothing ever quite clear enough for him to focus on. His Tallest had been there as well, the first time he’d seen them since being sent away from the rest of the Armada.

They had been destroyed.

At least it had been quick, but they’d still been murdered. There had been no battlefield death for them, nothing honorable.

His escape was almost a blur, working off of the instincts he’d been genetically encoded with. He’d managed to damage those holding him, the ones who had held him in place to watch the deaths of his leaders. He’d gotten away, his head aching and making him feel dizzy, and he’d gotten to an escape pod.

They must have been able to crash it, somehow.

Zim had landed several streets away from his base and he had run the entire way back, dodging behind trees and other such things whenever he’d been approached.

His remembering had been interrupted by the Dib-creature approaching him. For some reason, the human had offered a moving shelter from the rain, had offered his jacket to help cover Zim. His sister-beast had been there as well, actually helping her brother for the first time that Zim had ever seen.

And now he was here.

In _their_ house-base.

Tak’s old ship was before him, allowing him to communicate in a way the humans could understand. The tube of nanites was still held against his chest, his base within reach but GIR was still missing. His Tallest were murdered.

As far as he knew, he might be the only Irken left in the entire universe.

Dib stared at him with something like pity in his eyes and Zim wanted to wipe the expression off of his face. Claw it away until there was only anger and the need to fight. That was how they interacted – the fought and they yelled and they plotted around each other. Those were their ordinary interactions. Anything that was not that was…Confusing.

Uncomfortable.

Vulnerable.

Friendships were vulnerabilities, something that Zim could not afford to have. To be vulnerable was to be as good as dead. Having friends – he might as well pull off his Pak and let his time run down. But he wanted to have friends. It might have just been the time he’d spent on Earth, with the human worm-babies, but he wanted to have people he could talk to.

That had been his _failing_ as an Irken soldier.

He liked talking to people, liked to tell stories and talk and sometimes even listen to their stories as well. He had become an Invader to try and make certain that none would know.

But now, the few people he _could_ talk to were unable to understand him.

His translator had been ripped out of his throat.

Zim tapped a few more keys, then pointed at the viewscreen. Underneath the tip of his claw was the planet he’d been taken to. ‘_Danger,’_ he’d typed out. ‘_Enemies are located here. They are the ones who took me.’_

With a nod, Dib moved a step closer. “Zim,” he made a different face, something closer to comforting. “What exactly happened? Where’s GIR? And – And where’s your base?”

Holding up the tube of nanites, keeping it close to his chest, Zim typed again. ‘_My base is here. I was taken from my base and to this planet,’_ he jabbed a claw at it again. _‘I escaped and made it back to Earth to retrieve my things.’_ He met Dib’s eyes. ‘_It has been a long time since I last saw you.’_

“…How long? You’ve only been gone a few days.”

‘_Years. Twenty-eight, in fact.’_

Dib looked horrified again, his hands twitching like he wanted to do something with them. “Shit,” he muttered and Zim almost wanted to laugh. “Zim, do you need – I don’t know how to fix whatever’s wrong with you, but I can…I’ll do the best I can.” He turned and searched the shelves of the garage for a second, pulling down a sealed plastic container with clean cloths in it. “I know I can’t use water, so this is going to be interesting.”

Leaning back, Zim narrowed his eyes at Dib, hoping the human would understand that he needed to explain _more._

Luckily, Dib seemed to get it. “You’ve got…I think it’s blood? It’s on the back of your head.” He pulled out a clean, dry cloth. “I figured I would help clean you up and then try and figure out what to do from there. I can’t let you take over our planet but I can help you be okay again – You make things _really_ complicated, Zim.”

Zim nodded, then sat down on the edge of the pilot’s compartment of the ship, gesturing Dib forward.

Surprisingly, Dib was actually gentle enough in cleaning up that it didn’t hurt worse than it already did. “When you say your base is here,” Dib broached the subject after a minute. “Is that what the tube is?” he kept wiping down the back of Zim’s head, like he needed to do something with his hands or he would fall into old habits.

They’d never done this, before.

Gentle was never how they’d interacted. It had always been a grudging alliance that ended in backstabbing or it had been an all-out battle. The way Dib was acting made Zim feel a fondness in his chest, something he’d been stomping down for several years on Earth. Irkens were not wired to feel love in the same way as humans did.

It was just another point of failure on Zim’s part.

Not a proper soldier, not a proper Invader – he felt fondness and he liked to talk. As much as he hated to think about it, he was more like the humans than his own species. He suspected a corrupted gene bank. Defective, somehow, and the defect had ended up altering him as well. None of the others born from the same genes as him had come out like he had – or if they had, they’d been eliminated before reaching maturity. There was still the need to serve the Tallest, still the need to prove himself in battle and conquer planets, but he’d been created wrong.

If there were any others like him, he’d never found them.

His captors had taunted him with that, before they’d murdered the Tallest. They’d laid out every detail of his exile, had gotten the Tallest to tell Zim what he had already known. He was an exile on Earth, there was no actual mission for him there.

He’d known from the moment he’d been sent there.

It had just been another thing wrong with him. Optimism was not a common trait in Irken soldiers. He’d been hoping, had been hopeful, that if he conquered an entire planet by himself then maybe his leaders would reinstate him. Maybe they would let him go back home.

Which was yet another way.

Irkens did not get homesick. They were _Invaders_. Whatever planet they took, that was their new home.

Realizing he’d left Dib without an answer for a while, Zim nodded, continuing to clutch the tube of nanites to his chest. Leaning forward, he typed out, ‘_Nanites. The only way to pack an entire base into a small tube. The only way to make a base that will expand like mine always did when I needed it to.’_

Dib nodded as well. “That’s actually kind of cool.” He peered at the tube, not making any moves to take it or lean in closer. “Wait, Zim, do you know where GIR is?”

GIR was missing.

Zim shook his head. The little robot had been missing since Zim had been taken, his annoying antics disappearing when the intruders had broken into the lab. Something had happened to him, probably destruction. “Wait, just a second,” Dib turned away from him and typed something into the ship’s computer. “I’ve used this like this before – I’ve got the ship keyed into looking for other Irken tech. GIR is Irken, right?” he looked back at Zim. “I can scan the city to try and find him.”

Despite how annoying GIR was at times, he’d been Zim’s companion for the last decade. Zim nodded again.

Dib hit the button to send the command.

Within seconds, a map of the city was displayed on the screen and the computer was scanning section by section. “We’ll know within a couple of minutes,” Dib said, his voice oddly quiet. Normally, he was loud and Zim appreciated it. Someone who matched his excitement, his drama, was comforting. That had probably been part of why he’d become so attached to Dib. Landing on a new planet, falling into the role of disguised Invader, Zim had immediately found someone who_ knew_. Knew that he wasn’t human, knew that he was a threat. Dib had played to a part of him that wanted recognition, had been a way for him to get noticed but no one believed the human.

Zim had been playing to an audience of one, showing off exclusively for Dib.

If he’d been created for a different generation of Irkens, maybe he would have fit in more. If they’d conquered the entire galaxy already and he’d been born then, maybe he would have been _better._ Or if he’d been created at the beginning of their species, he might have fit in with their ancestors.

He was dragged out of his thoughts by the computer beeping.

“Looks like there’s a piece of Irken technology at…” Dib frowned at the screen. “The old school. From the scanner, it looks like it might be GIR.” He turned to Zim. “Do you want to go with me to retrieve him?”

Outside, Zim could hear the rain.

He turned his head towards the garage door. “Oh, right,” Dib frowned, chewing on his bottom lip. “Rain. And you don’t have your disguise. Hm.” He stepped back, scanning the shelves quickly. “I think we have something that could be used as a disguise,” he said after a few seconds. “We’ve got an old rain jacket and hat. The jacket has a hood, too,” he grabbed it down and offered it to Zim. “It has pockets, so you can put your base into one.”

Zim took it, rubbing his fingers over the material. He’d seen the children of this planet wearing these before, but they’d never seemed like the safer option between bathing in paste and wearing one.

“We also have a bunch of umbrellas,” Dib shifted awkwardly.

Nodding, Zim pulled off Dib’s jacket and pulled the raincoat on. The hat came next, his antenna curling up and laying flat against his head as he put it on. Just as Dib had said, there was a pocket sitting over his left hip and he slid the tube of nanites into it. It felt awkward, this disguise, and he already missed Dib’s jacket. The scent of it was comforting and the weight of it had been nice.

Plus, when he’d put it on, it had still been warm from the human’s skin.

Thankful that his boots and leggings were still intact, Zim stood up and waited next to Dib. Gesturing at himself, he met Dib’s eyes. “You look almost like you usually do,” Dib smiled for a second, seemingly pleased. “Almost like normal. It’s too bad you don’t have the same disguise tech as Tak did – hers made her look completely human. Although,” he shrugged. “Maybe it’s better that you didn’t look human.”

They would never have become what they were if Zim had been able to disguise himself like Tak had.

Zim, for just a second, almost wanted to put a hand on Dib’s face and push backward until the human fell down. Really, he was ridiculous. In truth, if Zim had chosen a little more wisely, then Dib might not have noticed at all, that much was certain. If he had chosen the standard Irken disguise, he might have just…Flown in under the radar.

But he had never wanted to.

Of _all_ his failings, that had been one of the biggest: He liked attention. Didn’t matter who paid it to him, if it was positive or negative, he just liked being noticed. That had been why, when given a fake mission meant to get him out of the way, he’d continued on like it was legitimate. Attention from his leaders, from those in charge, had been the best thing.

Attention from Dib had been good.

Praise and attention, even from a _human_, was good.

“Ready?” Dib pulled a big umbrella off the shelf, opening it into a full barrier before the garage door was even opened. When Zim nodded, Dib gestured for him to go, following along and keeping up with him. “Can you tell me anything about how you ended up like this?” he asked, the sound of the rain masking their conversation. “Or even what happened?”

Eventually, he might.

Zim looked at him with narrowed eyes, sighing. The human had always been seeking knowledge, even if it was to his detriment.

That had been one of the things he’d been fond of Dib for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So now we get Zim's POV.
> 
> I hope people like this story. It's seriously going to be slow to update -- I've got several series I'm working on and NaNo is coming up tomorrow. I'm trying to wrap a couple of things up. We'll see how that goes.


	3. The Fall Of Rain On Our Lives

As expected, Zim was pretty quiet the entire walk to the old school.

Dib held the umbrella over him carefully, doing his best to keep it over the alien’s head. Water was one of the biggest weaknesses, he’d discovered that fairly early on, but he didn’t want to put it to use now. Whatever had happened to Zim, whatever had been done to him, it had been enough to scar him and destroy his safe living situation.

His base was collapsed into a tube in his pocket.

A part of Dib was fascinated by the science of it, wanted to poke and prod and experiment with it until he knew exactly how it all worked.

But right now, Zim needed stability and safety.

Even possibly being in love with the alien, Dib still wasn’t sure when he’d moved on to wanting to keep him safe rather than keeping the world safe. Humanity had been saved by him enough. Zim needed help and Dib also needed to gather information because, whatever had been done, whoever had attacked him, they had murdered the Irken leaders. In front of Zim, which was only another piece of the trauma on top of everything else, but it was also worrying.

What if those responsible decided to come after humanity?

What if they came and found Zim again?

And what had happened to the rest of his people? Were they held captive somewhere, being tortured and tormented? If he ignored the problem, if he refused to get involved, was he partially responsible for the genocide of a – yes, true, a conquering and dangerous species, but an entire species didn’t deserve to be wiped out.

Not if there were those who just wanted a quiet life. There had to be at least one Irken who wanted peace and calm.

Okay, so he was judging with a human morality. No one got to decide whether or not an entire species was going to be wiped out, not even if they were genocidal…

He was just going to go around and around in his own head.

Dib was almost glad when they approached where the signal was coming from.

The old school loomed large in front of them, strangely not diminished in any way despite the years and height that separated them from their attendance of it. On one side, he could see the new gym that had been built after the old one had been taken down by a couple of court orders and the odd disappearances of several building code inspectors. At his side, Zim twitched and he could see the muscles in the side of his face moving, his jaw clenching. He’d seen his antenna so rarely, but he knew they were probably moving underneath the hood of the jacket.

Zim clenched his hands together, clasping them both over the pocket Dib knew now held the tube of nanites that formed his base.

The yard of the school was empty and Dib was, suddenly and thoroughly, glad that it was a weekend.

Off in the distance, he could see a small pile of metal and rubble, like something that might have fallen from the sky. It only took a few seconds to look at it, to recognize the faceplate of the small robot that had been at Zim’s side for years. He was just…On the ground. Scattered across the hopscotch layout like someone had been playing using his pieces.

At his side, Dib felt Zim go stiff.

The alien glanced around, peered out from under his hood, then rushed forward and dropped to the ground. His hands were trembling, plumes of smoke coming off of him as he gently picked up the pieces of GIR.

Dib spotted another piece of him nearby, crouching down to pick it up. It looked like one of GIR’s arms, though he couldn’t tell if it was or not. It might have been a leg. As far as he knew, the robot had just been an annoyance throughout the years, not really useful in any way. Zim had snapped at him a lot and yelled at him often but this was –

He tried to imagine losing someone who had been at his side for so long.

Even someone who annoyed him so much would be hard for him to lose, he supposed. Zim had set out on his mission with GIR at his side and they hadn’t really been apart since then. GIR was one of the few connections – even fewer now, if Zim was right about his leaders being killed – that the alien had to his homeworld. He walked forward, trying to decide what to say as he offered out the piece he’d picked up. Zim didn’t look at him for a few minutes, his hands trembling as he gathered the pieces of GIR up. He stored them in the other pocket of his coat, taking the limb from Dib with a soft hiss.

“Can you put him back together?” Dib decided on saying.

Zim nodded, narrowing his eyes at Dib as he did. It was the look he got when he was considering briefly teaming up – over the years, Dib had seen that expression a couple of times. There had been a few threats that had needed that as a reaction.

Nothing recent, they seemed to have done a good enough job at warning the threats off.

Except for this. Zim was mute and GIR was broken and their base was pulled down. Whatever this threat was, they hadn’t been enough to warn it off. Hell – for all Dib knew, they were the reason it had targeted Zim. Too much power was going to be challenged. Not enough power was going to be challenged. Either way, there would always be challenges.

He just…

Hadn’t thought they would come for Zim like that.

He’d assumed safety on Earth, after everything they had done. The fights between them and the all-out battles against whatever came from outer space.

Dib looked over at Zim, watched his claws tap gently over the metal faceplate that belonged to GIR. He was quieter. It might have just been brushed off as a response to whatever had happened to him, but Zim was moving differently. His movements were slower, now – before, everything had been big and showy. A show put on in motions and movements and rants. Now…Now he was quiet. Restrained. Whatever had been done to him, it had granted him a different sort of maturity than what Dib was used to.

“When we get back to the house,” he cleared his throat awkwardly when Zim peered at him from underneath the raincoat. “Can you tell me anything else about what happened to you?”

Zim’s eyes seemed to be narrowed in distrust but he nodded slowly.

GIR’s faceplate slipped back into a pocket and he shoved his clawed hand into the one holding the tube of nanites. The motion of it gave Dib an idea. “Do you think your computers would have picked up on any data from what took you away?” Dib gestured at his pocket. “I know you were always scanning for stuff in the sky – I know you were, Zim, don’t even – so I have to wonder if it picked up on something before you got grabbed.”

With a strange, half-growled hiss, Zim nodded again.

“I think I might be able to figure out a translator, even,” Dib continued on, holding the umbrella a little further over Zim’s head. His other hand was shoved in the pocket of his jacket, poking at the lining without really feeling it.

There was so much for him to go over in his head.

Zim walked, sedate and almost absolutely silent, next to him for a few blocks. When they were far enough away from the school to not be able to see it anymore, Zim reached back into his pocket and pulled out GIR’s faceplate again. Dib watched him out of the corner of his eye, feeling like he was intruding despite helping Zim shield from the rain.

Everything Zim had known on Earth was ruined, now.

He didn’t have a base, didn’t have his disguise. He had nowhere to go, nowhere to run if the enemy returned. He was alone – GIR wasn’t much, Dib knew, but he was probably better than nothing. In one move, Zim had lost everything, including the home he had lived in for a decade.

And now he was left exposed.

Just a few years ago, Dib had wanted that. If the universe was listening to his wishes, it was moving glacially slow on answering them. Now he only wanted Zim to be safe—

Gaz was right.

He was in love.

Dib managed to keep his sigh internal. He would have time to panic over that later. Right now, Zim needed his help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I am continuing this story. Other things just got in the way for a bit. Life got complicated and I lost motivation for a lot of things.

**Author's Note:**

> So I have been working on this for a while, but I decided to post the first chapter to make myself work on it some more. I've been planning this story for about a decade, which puts it into an interesting category of fics I have created. 
> 
> Anyways, I hope people like this! Tell me what you think?


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